2003/04/30 by Marcos Rigol, M. Rigol, A. Muramatsu +3 · 13 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Cold Atom Physics and Bose-Einstein Condensates #Physics of Superconductivity and Magnetism #Quantum many-body systems #cond-mat.stat-mech #cond-mat.str-el #quant-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.91.130403
published as Phys. Rev. Lett. 91, 130403 (2003) · Revtex file, 4 pages, 5 figures, published version
arxiv created 2003/09/25 · openalex publication_date 2003/09/25 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Using quantum Monte Carlo simulations, we show that the one-dimensional fermionic Hubbard model in a harmonic potential displays quantum critical behavior at the boundaries of a Mott-insulating region. A local compressibility defined to characterize the Mott-insulating phase has a nontrivial critical exponent. Both the local compressibility and the variance of the local density show universality with respect to the confining potential. We determine a generic phase diagram, which allows the prediction of the phases to be observed in experiments with ultracold fermionic atoms trapped on optical lattices.